Game Show Hosts

There are few images more burned into the polyester-lined brain of 1970s and ’80s television than this: a grinning man in a pastel suit, standing under studio lights, wielding a microphone that looked like a car antenna mated with a coffee stirrer.

Skinny microphones. Why? No one knows. Possibly so they wouldn’t block the full majesty of those lapels you could hang-glide with. But somehow, every game show host of the era was issued one at birth, along with a perfect blow-dry and an innate sense of how to flirt with contestants named Debbie.

Bob Barker was the GOAT of the skinny mic. That little black wand was practically an extension of his soul. He didn’t just hold it—he caressed it, gestured with it, used it like a conductor’s baton as he delivered the immortal words,

“Come on down!”

It was so dainty, so elegant—a microphone you’d expect to find in a Barbie Dreamhouse lounge act. And yet, it was also undeniably powerful. That little stick picked up decades of guesses, gasps, and awkward answers like:

“How much does a box of Rice-A-Roni cost?”
“Uh…$17?”
“Actual retail price: $1.89.”

Game show hosts were a special breed. Always tanned, always calm under pressure, and always dressed like they were about to sell you a time-share in Boca Raton. Wink Martindale, Gene Rayburn, Richard Dawson—they didn’t just host the show, they ran it like a cocktail party on a gently swaying cruise ship.

And the mic? It was their Excalibur. Except instead of slaying dragons, they were introducing products from Westinghouse and asking housewives to guess what a microwave cost.

Gene Rayburn’s microphone on Match Game was especially ridiculous—it looked like a golf club dipped in licorice. He would lean over, extend it across the panel, and ask questions so deeply bizarre they seemed to be pulled from Mad Libs written by a tipsy uncle:

“Dumb Dora was so dumb…”
[AUDIENCE: “How dumb was she?”]
“…she thought a banana hammock was a ___!”

Then Richard Dawson would kiss someone on the mouth, and America would keep watching like nothing was weird about it.

Today’s hosts wear earpieces and clip-on mics, but they’ll never command the room like those old-school kings with their magic wands of broadcasting. Those skinny microphones weren’t just for speaking into. They were for orchestrating chaos, setting tone, and occasionally pointing at a hot tub.